Question re LNB's.

I have a new quad LNB this week, does moving the LNB about interfere with the picture and will it be tricky to get it back or is it a simple process, ( I am reluctant to move it let alone change it) and are there any tricks that will allow me to get Sky plus without subscription?

Yes the LNB must be in the correct/optimum position to receive the best signal, but I think you are just asking can I swap them over ?

That being the case yes, but first mark the holder where the old one sits regarding fore & aft, and just what angle it is rotated to (you will notice that its offset to the left or right)
Odds on it will not be spot on, so when you are able get an expert to fine tune it for you.

Even the smallest change in skew / rotation angle can cause performance to drop. Or even just pressing up or down on the LNB when taking cables off can cause problems.

Generally, you MUST pay for the hard drive functions on a Sky+ or Sky+HD box - they are free with a subscription, or an charge of £10 per month if you only have a freesatfromsky / free to view card. If you dont have a FTV card, then just get any receiver that has USB recording funtions - OK you loose the 7 day EPG, but you get a recording box...or go for a Freesat PVR...

But there was/ is (dont know if the trick still works) one make of Sky box (3100) that does allow you to record with no subscription (you still need the card). It involves downloading some "hacked" files from the tinkernet, and connecting up the Sky+ box to a PC, and forcing the hacked file into the box...
And there is no say in whether or not it will affect or be affected with the official software downloads from Sky....

see more on _http://www.steves-homepage.co.uk/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?num=1210113159 , but note it is a few years old and I have no idea if it still works or not, and I take no responsibility if you knacker your box doing this!

THE GUY: you seem to know what you're talking about...

When we come to live in Valencia.... could you please help us installing what we need to watch UK channels? Happy to pay for that and will also throw a paella, agua de valencia and a horxata with fartons!

can I come with him please

If you just want to swap your lnb buy a budget satellite finder from ebay for about £5. Very easy to operate/understand & it will come in handy again should your dish move in bad weather.

We have a little set up that we bought for 99 euros in Lidl (Spain), and The Guy told us on this forum how to tune it so that we got some English channels. However because we only have an 80cm dish we can't get the main BBC and ITV channels. We can get BBC News and BBC Parliament, Sky News all the BBC radio and some other TV channels such as True Movies. The Guy said if we got a bigger dish we should be able to get the main channels.

Hope this helps!

Sure no problems.
Drop me an email off board and I shall see what I can do for you...

But you will no longer get BBC NEws, PArliament and Alba, as they changed frequencies and will only be available if you can get BBC1 orBBC2 as they moved them to those frequencies - to close one of their frequencies down and save they say 20m a year...

Basic beepers are ok for rough alignment of a dish, but not good for good accuracy of dishes.
They are no good for doing LNB skews...they just do not show enough data to be able to align the skew correctly.
YOu can do the skew by lookuing at a channel which is very skew sensitive - like Sky Sports News, or Eurosport 2, or if you dont have a subscription, sky channel 998. But note that some beepers, when connected, distort the readings...

Aaaaaagh! We haven't been in Spain since June, so if these channels have disappeared we would not realise.

Oh well,hopefully we will not have the house much longer (assuming our sale completes). I will tell the new owners that they will need a bigger dish!

I totally agree, but they are fine if you just want to swap your lnb or if your dish has blown in the wind & just needs pushing backwards a few degrees.